Not everyone has the business sense to make certain decisions; some business owners can run the business but maybe the individual has a hard time choosing the right shipping company. This is where a freight broker, with their handy broker system, comes into play. What is a freight broker? A better questions is, what is a broker? So let us start there.
A broker is essentially the real estate agent of the business sphere. In fact, they oftentimes overlap each other but they differ by their roles; a broker can go off on their own and make deals on the fly while a real estate agent works underneath an individual with a broker’s license. The broker is a mediator, the dealer, the middle-man, the one who builds the business line between two or more entities, whether they are businesses or individuals. A freight broker is an individual who specifically works to find a business that is looking to ship goods and a carrier that is willing to ship the goods, and can even handle freight management with freight management software broker systems.
Let us say you have goods that need to be shipped and you decide you are going to find a carrier yourself and forgo the middle-man. It is not an inherently bad choice. In fact, if you are familiar with that aspect of business and have plenty of experience and have the business acumen or maybe you are a professional in that field and feel comfortable doing it, then go for it. Why spend money having someone do work you know you are comfortable and have the knowledge to do? However, that can’t be said for others. An individual might not know where to look, or what records to search, or maybe an individual is too trusting of reviews online; a freight broker has the ability to distinguish a bad carrier company from a good one. They are capable of finding the company that is going to give you the best deal for the right job. This can be done with broker systems like freight broker software.
It is not impossible to see why an individual might feel uncomfortable dealing with shipments. However, it does not hurt to be familiar with a few concepts that are employed in shipping. After all, there are 5.9 million commercial vehicles operating in the United States alone, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, with 12 million working within the transportation network.
LTL shipping, for example, is a method used when an individual wishes to only transport a few products but does not want to pay for the whole trailer; it’s an acronym for Less-Than-Truckload. The rest of the trailer is then filled with products from other companies that are doing the same. While this can be cheaper, products tend to take longer to get to their destination because of the stops beforehand. This popular option has led to the LTL market reach around $35 billion. The U.S. e-commerce revenue as a whole is reaching $423.3 billion and hasn’t peaked yet. And because of the nature of shipping, retail industries have to adjust by offering different shipping options like LTL.
For those shipping products weighing tons, it should be noted that its cost per ton is expected to increase from $882, like it was in 2007, to $1,377 by 2040, according to calculations by the U.S. Department of Transportation.
